Heavy clashes along Pakistan-Afghanistan border

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Julia McFarlane, and at 5 o'clock GMT on Sunday, the 12th of October, these are our main stories.

Fierce border fighting is reported between Pakistan's army and Taliban forces from Afghanistan.

Hamas says it will begin releasing Israeli hostages on Monday as part of the Gaza peace process.

And the EU introduces new travel restrictions.

Also, in this podcast.

Don't squish it, and after it's dead, flush it down the toilet, okay?

And flush it a couple of times.

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Oh, what are you doing?

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Honey, there's a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.

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Hollywood icon Diane Keaton dies at the age of 79.

We look back at her life and career.

Intense clashes are being reported on the Afghanistan border with Pakistan after a Taliban attack on Pakistani military outposts.

This latest escalation comes just a few days after a Pakistani airstrike in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Afghanistan is considered a safe haven for separatist Pakistani militants as well as the Pakistani Taliban.

Both groups have been increasingly engaged in fighting with the Pakistan military in recent months.

Our global affairs reporter and Barasanet Rajan explained it all for me.

A few days ago, there was a major attack on Pakistani security forces inside Pakistan that was blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants who are aligned ideologically with the Afghan Taliban.

Now, 16 soldiers were killed in that attack.

And a day after, Afghanistan blamed Pakistan of carrying out airstrikes inside Pakistan.

And Pakistan neither confirmed nor denied these airstrikes.

The reason behind this latest round of fighting has been the Pakistani Taliban militants.

Now, Pakistan says that they are operating from Afghanistan, crossing the border and carrying out attacks on that security forces.

So, hundreds of soldiers have died in the past few years.

And especially their intensity has increased after the Afghan Taliban seized power in Kabul.

The Taliban administration, denied these charges.

So that has led to the latest round of accusation and counter-accusation.

And what we are seeing is intense battle.

And people are talking about small arms and artillery fire being used.

And when the day breaks, probably we will hear more about what happened in these areas.

Hearing you explain all this, it seems like it's almost a mirror of what was happening a few years ago when the Afghan Taliban sought refuge in Pakistan to launch attacks on Afghanistan, it now sounds like the opposite is happening.

That's what many people would point out.

About 10 years ago, the Pakistani army launched a major operation against militants and declared victory.

And they retained control of many of those tribal areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province at that time.

But that was a major operation involving thousands of troops.

But now you see this escalation that is forcing especially police posts in remote areas.

These are coming under target means militants are getting more and more emboldened.

So, this is what many Afghan analysts would point out.

See, this is what happened to us about five, six years ago for the last 20 years, until the Taliban seized power because Pakistan was being used as a base and support and medical support for many of these injured cadres of the Taliban.

Now, you see the Pakistani Taliban coming from the other side and attacking.

And on the one side, you see Pakistan gaining more international attention.

The country is now more closer to President Trump.

In fact, they recently had a border clash with an aerial battle with India.

But now they are.

In fact, the Pakistani Army Chief has met President Trump a couple of times.

And at the same time, they're also facing internal security problem, not on one hand, on both sides, in Balochistan as well as in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

So this is a major concern for the Pakistani military, even though they are militarily strong.

These kind of ground guerrilla attacks or suicide attacks, it's difficult for them to manage at this point.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of Gazans to return to their homes or what's left of them.

But officials say more than ten thousand Palestinians remain missing under the rubble of the flattened enclave.

The IDF has withdrawn from some areas, and a top Hamas official has said they will begin to release the remaining 48 hostages, both alive and dead, on Monday.

Israel does not allow the BBC to report freely from inside Gaza.

Our correspondent, Barbara Pletusher, is monitoring developments on both sides from Tel Aviv, and she was at a rally on Saturday in Hostage Square.

For two years, they've come here every Saturday night.

Now, Hostage Square vibrated with hope that this would be the final rally.

President Trump clearly the hero, his daughter taking the stage.

And the President wanted me to share, as he has with so many of you personally, that he sees you,

he hears you, he stands with you.

Always.

Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, tried to give the Israeli prime minister some credit for the deal.

To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

They've accused Netanyahu of sabotaging past ceasefire attempts.

Aren't ready to forgive him.

To Prime Minister Benjamin Yahoo.

Mr.

Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner acknowledging the pain on the other side.

And also

to see the suffering end for the people in Gaza.

who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no fault of their own other than being born into a situation that was horrific.

In Gaza, the bombing has stopped, but the Israelis created a wasteland.

You can't call it peace, not yet.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are making the journey home, displaced again and again by the war.

It's finally safe to return.

Finding, though, that there is nothing to go back to, the scale of destruction is hard to take in.

For many, everything is lost.

My house, which I built 40 years ago, was gone in a moment.

All my brothers are gone, my nephews, too.

What's left in the world?

Even death is better than the struggle we are in.

This is the best chance for ending the war.

But there are so many questions and obstacles, so much to rebuild for a lasting peace.

Barbara Pletasha.

Well, next in the diplomatic process, President Trump is due to travel to Egypt on Monday for a signing ceremony of the peace plan.

In Gaza, Hamas has called up 7,000 members of its security forces to reassert control where Israel has withdrawn, amid uncertainty over who will govern the territory now.

Our reporter Rushdie Abu Alouf left Gaza during the war and he's now based in Turkey.

He said Hamas's positioning has raised fears about internal violence as Palestinians focus on retrieving bodies and rebuilding the territory.

It is very serious, and I think talking to people in Gaza today, the people are very angry about this move.

And they said we were expecting Hamas to wait for us and help us to clear the rubble and distribute food to the people, not to show people with guns and masks in the middle of the streets.

Others who are supporting Hamas were appreciating and celebrating this derivative.

Finally, we will get rid of the thieves and the chaotic situation in Gaza, which everyone rejected, including those who are not in favor of Hamas, but they want somebody else to do it.

I was speaking to like a human rights activist today, Khalil Abu Shamala, who lives in Gaza, and he said this is a great warning that internal fighting might erupt.

And there is signs, a Glengold Dugmush family, they have a very long criminal record, including kidnapping people and foreigners before.

They have kidnapped a group of Hamas people, about seven people.

And Hamas claimed the group has contact with the Israelis and they were told by an Israeli officer to kill the two Hamas people.

Well, it's very hard to verify.

This is what Hamas is saying in the media.

They were killed within like

two hours of their abduction, and the others were shot in their legs and they were thrown in the street.

Hamas hit back and they killed one of the Dogmush family and they kidnapped 30 people.

It is serious.

We have seen this back in 2007, where about 300, 400 people were killed in the fighting between Hamas and Fatiha.

Now we are talking about five different gangs groups and big clans, big family with a lot of guns, you know.

Rushdie Abu Alouf.

European authorities have introduced strict new regulations to crack down on crime and prevent travellers overstaying their welcome.

From today, most non-EU citizens will have to provide biometric information and answer some questions about their journey when they travel to countries in the Schengen zone, which includes all EU nations except Ireland, Cyprus, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland.

I asked travel journalist Simon Caldup why these new rules are necessary.

To have control over people overstaying at the moment, there's a strict limit for travelers such as me from the UK to spend no more than 90 days in any 180 days.

They also want to identify criminals.

The first time you encounter this, there is a strict procedure where you provide your four fingers as as well as a facial biometric that gets stored in an EU database.

And subsequent visits, it's just going to be the facial biometric.

And it basically checks: is this Julia McFarlane?

Yes, it is.

She matches our records.

And also, we can tell from our database that she hasn't exceeded her time in Europe.

And that's going to be happening on your way into the Schengen area and on your way out.

Simon, tell me this.

How is this any different from the standard passport checks and ID checks that are taken when anyone enters the Schengen zone?

This is going to be absolutely transformational at the moment.

For example, there's plenty of people who are swerving the three-month limit on stays simply by having two passports.

That won't be possible in future because if I've got two passports, then it will know that I'm the same person because it will have my facial biometric and my fingerprint.

They are absolutely keeping tabs at the 1800 crossing points into the Schengen area airports, but you've also got seaports, international rail routes, and road crossings.

It's not going to make passing through airports and ports any quicker, is it?

Everybody I have spoken to is warning how difficult it is going to be.

I spoke, for example, to the boss of Ryanair, Europe's biggest budget airline.

He's Michael O'Leary.

I am pretty certain it's going to go wrong.

I am pretty certain that border control here in the UK and also at many European airports will not be able to accommodate at the backlog of queues.

But the advantage we have is it's October and we're moving into the winter period, so there's a lot less pressure on, but I think it will be bumpy and lumpy through the winter.

And hopefully, it will have worked its way out of the system by the the time we get to next summer.

The Romanian authorities told me we'd recommend if you're a third country national, and remember that's everybody who isn't a Schengen citizen, turn up at the airport early.

The Danish immigration minister actually said this has the power to foul things up, even for Schengen passport holders, because there's going to be so much, as we would say, red tape attached.

Simon Calder.

The American actress Diane Keaton, who is best known for her roles in The Godfather and Woody Allen's early comedies, has died in California.

She was 79.

Her Hollywood career spanned more than 50 years and included what are widely regarded as some of the best films ever made.

Here she is alongside Woody Allen in the romantic comedy Annie Hall, a performance that landed her an Academy Award.

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Darling, I've been killing spiders since I was 30, okay?

Very big spider.

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Okay.

Veteran Hollywood reporter Jeannie Wolfe, who knew Diane Keaton personally, told me how she will be best remembered.

Look, we all wanted to be Annie Hall, didn't we?

I mean, gloves, hats, scarves.

But really, we can talk about the hats and the gloves.

But the thing you have to remember, it's her personality more than any wardrobe that made her Annie Hall and that made her endeared her with us and made her play a wide range of roles.

She played many different roles over the years and she said she liked comedy the best.

She found comedy relaxing for her, but she certainly did well when she was called upon to play drama.

She could do anything reds.

What an intense movie that was.

And Father of the Bride, she was always funny.

And First Wives Club, she was very good at being sarcastic.

I think that's what's so interesting about this incredible woman is she's had such a long career.

Her career has spanned more than five decades.

And Jeannie, you will know better than most people what it takes to survive in the Hollywood industry for quite so long and to still be desired and to still be cast in things.

I mean, she was still so spunky and such an incredibly vibrant actress well into

her older years in an industry that so many people feel is quite ageist.

I know, but you see, she didn't make her career on wearing a push-up bra and showing as much skin as she could

at the awards.

She was just so unique.

And what does it take to stay in the business so long?

First of all, she and everybody else would tell you it's an enormous amount of luck, but talent and a mutual respect.

People would get a good laugh out of her, but they knew that she was some actress.

And what about the the many tributes to her over the years?

I mean, how did the rest of the industry how did they see Diane Keaton?

Well, I remember the big American Film Institute tribute to her and one

A plus name after another came up and told

there was always a funny story, but there was always a a great acknowledgement of her talent.

And that's what people would say, talent, talent, talent.

But talent in Hollywood, it means being unique, being something special.

A star becomes a star partly because of luck, but partly because there wasn't anybody like Diane Keaton.

You know,

who could you say was like her except people who tried to imitate her?

In some of her films where she is starring with some incredible female actresses like Goldie Horne or Bette Midland, Oh, yeah.

You can tell they're having such a riot behind the scenes as well as on camera.

It's true, and

I would go visit her behind the scenes.

And they were having a riot, but then they also took this very seriously.

So it's a funny, it's a funny mix, isn't it?

She took acting very seriously, but she was always having a ball.

Jeannie Wolf on Diane Keaton's Legacy.

Still to come.

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Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado is using her new platform as Nobel Nobel Peace laureate to call on President Nicolas Maduro to stand down.

She told BBC Mundo's Noberto Paredes that after the Nobel Peace Prize announcement on Friday, she phoned US President Donald Trump and thanked him for his support on behalf of all Venezuelans.

My colleague Nick Miles asked Noberto what Miss Machado wants the US and others to do to force Mr Maduro to relinquish power.

Well, she's asking the US and its allies to put more pressure on Maduro.

She seems to be supporting Trump's decision to bomb and to attack boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Trump says that these are drug cartels, Venezuelan drug cartels controlled by Maduro.

She seems to think that this puts pressure on Maduro's regime to cut what she thinks that is how the government finances itself and how Maduro has been able to survive throughout the years with the money from trafficking, drugs, and humans.

The regime in Venezuela is a criminal structure.

It sustains themselves on the criminal flows from their illicit activities.

And we need the international community to cut those flows that are not only used for corruption, but also for repression, violence, and terror.

When you cut the inflows that come from drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arms smuggling, human trafficking, or the black market of oil, then the regime falls.

And that's exactly what we're seeing: the tracks that are getting deeper and deeper as we tap right now.

So, Norberto, moving away from the economics of this, it seems the opposition movement is either in hiding, a lot of them are in prison, they're not necessarily particularly confident of winning at the ballot box because they would say the election would be fixed.

So, how do you see this moving forward politically?

If we take into consideration all these things you're saying, that she's in hiding, like most of the opposition leaders, they are either in Miami or Madrid or they are also hiding.

Yes, it's difficult to see a change, but when you see Maduro and his support in Venezuela has been eroding throughout the years, I remember when Maduro used to attract hundreds of thousands of people to his rallies in Caracas.

Last year there were a few thousands.

And I interviewed a few of them and they would tell me that they had to be there because they worked for the government.

We see that his political situation isn't very stable.

He's not the strong political figure that he used to be in the past.

So she thinks she's got the upper hand to make him negotiate.

But given the amount of support he still has from the military in Venezuela, how likely do you think that will be?

He's got very strong support from the Minister of Defense, Padrino Lopez.

He's got the top military, they're tightly close to the government as well.

Mario Corina Machado, she thought that she could infiltrate the army, as Juan Guedo did when he was the opposition leader in 2018, when he gathered some army officers and they tried to make a coup.

She tried that last year.

Mario Corina Machado tried that last year.

When she was calling the army to rebel and to do something,

she was calling the army to do that, and directly she didn't do it openly.

But now it seems further away from happening, and I think that's why she's putting all her bets on Trump and on his decision to fight these boats and drug cartels that are, according to hate, trafficking drugs into the US.

Now, gone are the days when facelifts were reserved for the aging wealthy.

Now, Now, apparently, an increasing number of younger people are opting to go under the knife.

People in their twenties and thirties are happily sharing their before and after pictures, and even the very bruised bit in between, on social media.

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London-based plastic surgeon Professor Ash Musahebi told us why younger people are now opting for facelifts.

I think there's a pressure of social media and the selfies and what they

are thought they should look like is pushing them towards this.

The facelift normally lasts about 10 to 15 years.

So if they're doing it in their 20s and in their 40s, then they're kind of having to potentially do it again.

It's tragic that people are being offered this at that age.

Any surgery has a risk and we always talk about risk ratio benefit.

And for for that age, I think that really is something that shouldn't be really offered, to be honest.

I've got many Turkish colleagues that are very ethical surgeons and very good surgeons because of the lack of regulation and heavy advertising.

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Sometimes patients can die, particularly for facelift.

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Professor Ash Musahebi.

And we end this podcast in Cape Verde, the small island nation off the west coast of Africa.

It's a collection of ten islands with a population of just 600,000.

And on Monday, the national men's football team will take on Eswatini in a very important match.

If Cape Verde wins, it'll qualify for its first ever World Cup, a huge achievement for a country that only really began playing competitive international football just 20 20 years ago.

James Kamarasami spoke to one of the players, Roberto Lopez, after he had finished training and began by asking him what the mood is like in Cape Verde.

Yeah, it's good, I have to say.

Since we've been in Cape Verde, it's been nice and relaxed.

The music's been playing, so everyone's nice and relaxed, which is when we're at our best, to be honest with you.

But there must be quite a lot of expectation there.

S19 would be a difficult team to beat.

They can cause problems, they're dangerous.

But we know we have a good team here and we want to win the game, but I think it's it's important that we prepare right.

And part of that is enjoying these moments in between.

Now, eagle-eared listeners will be able to tell that you were born in Ireland.

You play for an Irish team, Shamrock Rovers.

So tell us how you actually came to be involved with Cape Verde, which is where your father's from, is that correct?

Which is not sort of conventional way of getting signed to a team, I suppose.

You actually head-hunted, weren't you?

Yeah, it was probably a good way to put it.

So I got a message through my LinkedIn account that I set up through college.

The previous manager messaged me on LinkedIn in Portuguese, which I didn't speak at the time.

I just thought it was like a welcome sort of spam message that you get a lot with LinkedIn.

So I just left it very rudely.

But thankfully enough, he replied to me in English probably nine months later and he asked me again, did I have time to think about his proposal?

So in that moment, I did what I should have done the first time and copied and pasted it into Google Translate.

And I'm probably the the luckiest man in the world.

The fact that they didn't sort of look elsewhere or they didn't say, oh, this fella's not interested.

So I replied, I apologised a hundred times, I think, and I said if the opportunity was still there, I'd love to be a part of the group.

I think maybe three or four weeks later, I was in Marseille making my debut.

As far as the team's concerned, the football team is not that old, is it, in terms of getting international status?

Yeah, we managed to qualify for an AFCON shortly after I arrived, which was amazing for we have a new younger generation of players from Cape Verde coming through as well.

And we're in a really good position at the moment.

And what do you think it's going to mean for the country if I don't want to jinx things, but if you do

get the points you need and get through to the World Cup finals?

It'll be amazing.

I think it'll give the country a tremendous lift on the world stage at one of the biggest sporting events in the world and seeing your country there, seeing your name and being part of that, it just gives you such a sense of pride and it'll be an amazing feeling for sure.

Roberto Lopez from the Cape Verde football team, hoping to make history on Monday.

And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or any of the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

We'd also love to hear from you if you think there's a story we've missed or one you want us to revisit.

Please do send us your ideas.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag global newspod.

This edition was mixed by Nick Randall and the producer was Wendy Urquhart.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Julia McFarlane.

Until next time, goodbye.

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